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Volume 25 No. 1

December 2012 Revisions Released!!

Make sure that you install these revisions AFTER your last payroll in 2012 has been completed and BEFORE you Save/Prepare W2's.

The latest accounting revisions were posted to our website www.gmsactg.com on December 14th, 2012. You should have received an email from GMS on December 14th that included instructions for downloading and installing these revisions. It is VERY important that all revisions are installed in a timely manner. As all of our revisions should be installed timely, it is even more important that the December revisions be installed at the proper time as critical issues such as W2’s and FICA, Federal, State and Local tax rate changes for the subsequent calendar year are included with these changes. (Please refer to the November newsletter and GMS Help Manual for more detail.)

January 2013 IN THIS ISSUE:

RLSS Non-Sufficient Funds Check Off-site Accounting Services Available Coming Soon! Mobile App Do You Know Who This Is?

Continued on page 3

Cost Allocation Series Article Seven Supplement #389 Cost Allocation Locks

Do you have grants and contracts that end at vari-

ous times during your fiscal year? Are you required

to submit final financial reports for these programs

prior to your fiscal year ending? Do you use actual

rates determined by using a year-to-date base for

any of the allocation pools such as leave, fringe

benefits, indirect costs and/or special allocations?

If the answer to these questions is “Yes” and your

grantor will not accept a revised final financial re-

port once your fiscal year has ended, then you may

want to consider using the Cost Allocation Locks

supplement.

As you are aware, when using a year-to-date base

to allocate your pools, the allocation rates will fluc-

tuate on a month to month basis. If you have a pro-

gram that ends during your fiscal year and you pre-

pare the final report to the funding source based on

that particular month’s Revenue & Expense report,

chances are in the subsequent months the allocation

rate(s) will fluctuate in either direction.

As the rates fluctuate you will see the result of this

fluctuation as small amounts charged to the pro-

grams that you have already “closed”. By the end

of your organization’s fiscal year these amounts are

going to have to be dealt with. The Cost Allocation

Locks supplement is an excellent way to accom-

plish this! Continued on page 4

Fun Facts about Austin!!!

Austin, Texas has about 19 million visitors each year!! This is more than Disneyland (14.7 million) or Niagara Falls (14 million). Why not come and see what all the fuss is about??!!

Join us May 19th – 24th for the GMS Summit 2013 - 28th Annual Financial Management Conference in Austin, Texas. Watch for the next few month’s newsletters for articles de-tailing the sessions to be offered and an an-nouncement of a NEW Intensive Session on Employment Law!!

For further details please visit our website:

https://www.gmsactg.com/events/conferences.html

Page 2 NEWS FROM GMS A PUBLICATION FOR GMS CLIENTS VOLUME 25 NO. 1

GMS, Inc. 10559 Metropolitan Avenue

Kensington, MD 20895

Phone: 800-933-3501

Fax: 301-933-3502

E-mail: service4gms@gmsactg.com

Off-Site Accounting Services Available

GMS offers a wide variety of off-site services for our clients. Two of the more popular ones are year-end assistance and training on a specific feature or pro-cedure in GMS. However there are also other areas in which we may be of as-sistance. As you know, bank reconciliations being done timely are critical in order to produce accurate financial reports. Other accounts on the Balance Sheet are not to be taken lightly either. Not having your Accounts Payable Analysis reconciled to your General Ledger, or not knowing the detail behind any asset or liability account on your Balance Sheet can have a dramatic im-pact on your financial reports.

One of the services we offer is to reconcile these accounts for your agency. We know that there can be a variety of reasons that these reconciliations may have gotten behind. Why not let us help you get cur-rent with your procedures? We are also available to create some of the more involved Report Writer exercises for you. Don’t wait until your fiscal year ends to request these services. These services are billed at the prevailing rate which is presently $100.00 per hour.

Should you require off-site assistance in any of these areas, please contact us at service4gms@gmsactg.com to schedule these services.

RLSS Non-Sufficient Funds Check

When a check is returned because of

insufficient funds, the steps taken to

reverse the entry will depend upon the

method selected for interest calculation.

The primary difference between the

two methods is the Activity Date that

will be used. This Activity Date is im-

portant because the current period’s

interest is calculated based upon this

date if your loan is set up with Daily

Interest. The Activity Date is also es-

pecially important this time of year if

you issue 1098’s to your client as you

need to correctly reflect interest that

you have received during the year so

reversing the entry in the correct calen-

dar year is critical.

An Important Note: The following

steps were developed using the as-

sumption that the NSF check was the

most recently posted activity.

If the loan is set up as Amortization

method:

Select Loan Activity, enter the appro-

priate loan number, tap enter. Select

Print and print a copy of the Loan Ac-

tivity History, since you will be recon-

ciling the new balance to a previous

one and will need to know the dates

and amounts to be used in the next step.

From Loan Activity, Adjustments,

make a reversing entry. Use the same

activity date originally used when the

NSF check was received as the activity

date, and select repayment as activity

type. Enter the original activity total as

a negative number under “activity to-

tal”. Also enter the interest as recorded

on the original activity as a negative

number under interest. This will also

apply if there were any penalties, es-

crows, or miscellaneous fees recorded

in the original activity. Be sure to re-

verse any accrued interest that may

have been part of the original entry.

Use the paid-thru date of the last good

payment as the “new paid-thru” date.

Verify the new balance, which should

revert back to the balance prior to the

NSF check being posted as a repay-

ment. Use the Notes section of the ac-

tivity screen to record any pertinent

information.

Continued on page 4

The GMS Offices will be

closed Monday, January

21st in honor of Martin

Luther King Jr’s Birthday.

The offices will reopen

Tuesday, January 22nd

for

normal business hours.

Present versions

of Software are:

Accounting 1.2.287

RLSS 1.0.0.9

“Whether we want them or not, the New Year will bring new challenges; whether we seize them or not, the New Year will bring new opportu-nities.” ~Michael Josephson

Page 3 NEWS FROM GMS A PUBLICATION FOR GMS CLIENTS VOLUME 25, NO. 1

December 2012 Revisions Released continued from page 1

It is also important that all staff using the

GMS Accounting System read through the

list of changes included with the revision to

familiarize themselves with the new features

or changed items. Following is information

on some of the changes included in this revi-

sion:

New Items

New Supplement – We are happy to

release Supplement #424 Comparison

Financial Reports. This supplement

includes comparison reports for up to

5 years for your Balance Sheet and

YTD column on the Agencywide R & E

Report!!

Existing Budgets can now be edited

directly in the grid in Budget/PY rather

than deleting and re-entering the line.

For the Ohio school tax, all school dis-

trict codes can now be used even if a

district has no school tax.

.

Supplement #422 New Hire Reporting

now includes the electronic format for

Florida.

General Ledger

In PDF Reports we have added Quar-

terly Payroll Register and Quarterly

Reporting Register.

Documents can now be attached to GL

Codes, allowing a grant or contract to

be attached to a project code.

In Monthly Processing, the Batch Anal-

ysis is now available for multiple

months and you can choose to generate

the list for specific Books of Entry.

Accounts Payable

We have added a screen display on the

Print AP Check Form that shows the

next available check number.

When beginning to print A/P checks

and one of the requested check numbers

has been previously used, you will now

receive a list of the checks and batch

numbers in which they were used.

Supplement #330 Complete 1099’s now

has an option to adjust the position

vertically of the printed information

on the form.

Payroll

When entering or importing timesheets

for annual salaried employees who are

on a semi-monthly or monthly pay cy-

cle we now display the total hours in

the pay period on the Batch Control

Screen and Timesheet Batch Report.

We have added a screen display on the

Print Payroll Check Form that shows

the next available check number.

When beginning to print Payroll checks

and one of the requested check numbers

has been previously used, you will now

receive a list of the checks previously

used.

We have defaulted the posting period

of the Payroll Journal Entry to the

last day of the month of the settlement

date if Supplement #306 Direct Deposit

Payroll is used. If the supplement is not

used, it will use the last day of the

month of the paycheck date.

In Supplement #517 Retirement Report

for Indiana clients severance pay can

now be reported separately from regular

pay.

These are just some of the changes in the

December 2012 revisions. Please make sure

you read the memo included with the re-

visions on December 14th or click on Help/

Latest Revision to see a complete list of

the changes and new features.

Note: Subsequent to these revisions, on

January 2, 2013 a revision was posted to

the GMS website containing the 2013

changes for Federal withholding, FICA

withholding, Ohio School Tax and State

of Oregon withholding. There was also a

change for position 499 of the 2012 W2

electronic file. This revision should be

installed before the first payroll dated in

2013 is processed. Please see the Memo

dated January 2, 2013 for more details.

Here is another baby pic-

ture of a current GMS

staff member. Do you

recognize this person?!

How many of you

guessed correctly last

September? To find out

who the “Featured Em-

ployee” is, please go to the GMS Employees page on

our website. http://www.gmsactg.com/company/

about-us/gms-employees.html. On the bottom of the

page we will reveal whose picture it is!!

Do you know

who this is?

GMS will launch a new mobile application in

January, 2013 for our GMS Summit - 28th

Annual Financial Management Conference!

You will be able to view schedules and maps

as well as plan your day and network with

other attendees. You will have the ability to

access up-to-date information leading up to

the big event and stay connected while in at-

tendance from the convenience of your

smartphone.

Visit our website for all conference related

information: https://www.gmsactg.com/events/conferences.html

COMING

JANUARY 2013!

Page 4 NEWS FROM GMS A PUBLICATION FOR GMS CLIENTS VOLUME 25, NO. 1

Cost Allocation Series Article Seven Supplement #389 Cost Allocation Locks continued from page 1

When a program ends and you finalize the allocation

amounts you can move the subsequent amounts caused

by the rate(s) fluctuation to another program. Typically you would move these amounts to the following grant or

contract for the same program. This is done very simply by identifying the “final” allocated amounts, locking them

at those amounts, and specifying the program element to

which the fluctuation amounts are to be transferred. GMS highly recommends that you send a letter to your grantor

agency informing them of this accounting practice prior to finalizing each of the grants/contracts.

This is a great way to deal with one of the characteristics

of a year-to-date base for pools when your programs have

differing years than you organization’s fiscal year and your grantor agencies will not accept a revised final financial

report.

Please see the GMS Help Manual for more details on this supplement and its methodology.

Orders for this supplement may be placed on the GMS

website at https://www.gmsactg.com/order -

supplements.html. The supplement price is:

Purchase Annual License/

Price Maintenance 1-2 Users $160.00 $24.00

3-4 Users $200.00 $30.00

5+ Users $250.00 $37.50

Note: This is the final article on the Cost Allocation Series. We hope you found them helpful!!

RLSS Non-Sufficient Funds Check continued from page 2

If the loan is set up as

Daily

interest method:

Select Loan Activity, en-

ter the appropriate loan

number, tap enter. Select

Print and print a copy of

the Loan Activity History,

since you will be recon-

ciling the new balance to

a previous one and will

need to know the dates

and amounts to be used in

the next step.

From Loan Activity, Ad-

justments, do an adjusting

entry. Use the date of the

last “good” activity as the

activity date. Select re-

payment as activity type.

Enter the amount of the

payment as a negative

number in “activity total”.

Enter the amount of inter-

est charged when the pay-

ment was originally re-

ceived as a negative

amount in “current inter-

est”. Enter any other

amounts as negative

amounts in fees, escrows,

etc., as originally record-

ed. Be sure to reverse any

accrued interest that may

have been part of the orig-

inal entry. This should

result in a minus principal

amount which equals the

amount of principal rec-

orded in the original

transaction. Use the paid-

thru date of the last valid

activity as the new paid-

thru date for this activity.

Use the Notes section of

the transaction screen to

record any pertinent infor-

mation. Verify the new

loan balance – it should

revert to the

loan balance as

it was prior to

the NSF check

being original-

ly posted as a

repayment.

NOTE: Alt-

hough you may

wish to record

a fee under

“NSF Fees” it

is more reason-

able to do so

when the next

payment is received. If

you include it in the re-

versing entry, it will im-

pact the balance, basically

increasing the loan bal-

ance by the amount of the

fee. By doing this, you

will be charging interest

on the fee, which is not

normally an acceptable

accounting practice. If

the closing documents

signed by the borrower

allow interest to be

charged on NSF fees, then

yes, you may enter it now

and increase the loan bal-

ance. Think of it this

way: you cannot collect a

fee from a check that was

returned due to non-

sufficient funds. The next

time a valid repayment is

recorded is the time to

deduct the NSF fee from

the activity total.